


Falcate

by CountessMillarca



Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Drabble Sequence, Gen, Short One Shot, Tragedy, Uchiha Massacre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 03:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3594375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountessMillarca/pseuds/CountessMillarca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a night of death and moon-shaped smiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falcate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackMajjicDuchess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackMajjicDuchess/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. All rights belong to Kishimoto Masashi.

Blood.

Blood.

Blood.

_Nothing but_ _blood_. Yūgao breathes the blood-scent. In. Out. _She_ breathes. It is chill-air, chill-earth. The Uchiha compound is glutted with the tang of blood, soaking deep, and deeper. What is flesh without blood? What is heart without pulse? Bodies drained to human husks and bones ground to their medullae. ANBU slither in shapeless shadows all around her – but she is standing still. Because _she sees it_.

Untorn body, uncut skin. Beating heart, breathing lungs. Her feet are moving. Close, and closer she comes. Yūgao is kneeling, fingers stroking his cheek.

_He_ breathes. _Boy_!

Boy.

Boy.

Boy.

#

Yūgao gathers him in her arms, and he shivers. Syllables fall from his lips, one by one. Tōsan. Kāsan _._ Nīsan. A pitiful litany of vowels and consonants. Specters. One rises above all others, spoken again, and again. And _again_ , seeking, pleading. _K_ _ā_ _san_. Yūgao’s arms are slim but contoured around sinewy muscle and made for holding katana. Not boys. Her grip becomes tighter, suffocating. No matter how tight she holds him, hers are not the arms of a mother. Not _his_ mother’s. Is it fortune that he lives? Is it mercy to kill him?

The boy’s _name_ is the real tragedy.

#

Sarutobi Hiruzen stares down at the boy, nothing but shroud of silence and brittle skin overhead.

“Sasuke.” He speaks only the boy’s given name, as if he is loath of the surname steeped into the ground he walks on. The etymology of the clan’s name is unknown, perhaps known in another time, but here and now only one syllable bears meaning.

_Chi_. _Blood_.

“ _Sasuke_.” Another tone of voice, another note of emotion. That the boy shares the name of the Sandaime’s father is another tragedy.

Tight-clasped in Yūgao’s arms, Sasuke stirs but doesn’t wake.

“Take him to the hospital, Yūgao.”

#

An amalgam of odors filters through her nose when Yūgao takes one step into Konoha’s hospital. It has always smelt of antiseptic and death to her. Death of disease, death of weariness, death of fate. But not this time. Yūgao cannot smell the death that haunts its corridors, cannot distinguish death from _death_. She has gorged herself on different kinds of death, and this night, it is the death of blood that seeps into the fascicles of her nerves. Any other death is infinitesimal in comparison.

Her eyes flicker to the boy buried deep in her arms.

Death of innocence.

#

The nurse who takes the boy is smiling. It is a smile curled with softness. A _mother’s_ smile. Yūgao’s lips remain uncurled. She cannot return what her mouth has no memory to form, nor does she want to. It is not a night for smiles of any kind, but she knows that where she will go after she delivers her report, a smile will greet her. It will be hung on thin lips and the moon will reflect on it. Yūgao will trace it with her lips and pretend that it is hers. A moonflower that blooms overnight. _For her_.


End file.
